As the tide rises, tiny shells

tumble and wait, and tumble. There is nothing

alive inside most of them 

but the kind of light

in a room whose curtains have been drawn for years,

a room whose window 

faces a street

where people sit late into the evenings at cafes

and the palm fronds flutter. Someone sits quietly

in that room most afternoons, listening 

to the chatter, trying to hear a voice 

she might recognize. At dusk she gets dressed,

goes down to the cafe, and drinks a glass of wine. 

No one ever talks to her. Of course the ocean never stops 

pulling its shells from the deep; some of them 

still have creatures alive inside them, 

even as they’re stranded by the falling tide

to dry up and die, or be eaten by the little birds 

who run along the beach, willets or terns, 

or picked up by someone who admires their beauty

then throws them back into the ocean.

--published in Alaska Quarterly Review

 

Housekeeping

Sunday mornings we walk around our house 

collecting the turtles and frogs that have slipped in

during the week, while we worked too hard

to attend to such ordinary chores 

and while we gather them we sing, and while we sing

mourning doves line up on the gardenia bushes outside

and look in at us, and listen; and while 

we sing, our children sleep deeply, growing 

fur and vivid senses 

inside their bodies, in some other fragile world

that will vanish as soon as we wake them, which makes it

all the more precious and necessary

and so we sing softly, across their dreaming bodies,

of happiness we haven’t ever really known 

but want to make possible for them, our children,

at least while they’re sleeping, by singing these songs

whose words we make up as we sing, and whose melodies

we compose like the wind composes in the trees,

simply by moving our bodies.

--published in Orion & Like Happiness

 

The Horses

In that place you never want to talk about, there were

horse skins hanging from nails in the barn

where there once had been horses. You told me your parents

would go in there sometimes and strip each other naked

and slip into those horse skins. You’ve said their bodies

would seem to grow larger to fill that slack skin

until they were actual horses. And you stood there

in the bare yard waiting for those horses to push open

that barn door with their massive heads and limp off 

as though they were overworked and world-weary, out 

into the tall grass; their ribs showed gaunt, 

their eyes were filmy, and flies made a dark cloud 

around their slack bodies, but still they walked out there

while you aired-out the barn, gathered their clothing, 

folded it neatly, and set it in a pile 

on the bench for later. Then you went inside

to nap and wander though the house. You cooked yourself

a big meal—something you loved—and then you waited

for the moon to rise full though it was still afternoon

by the clock. And that night you would carry out the saddles

and reins, bit and blinders, or you’d walk out

in your nightgown to ride your mother and father

bareback, until they remembered who they were

by the feel of your small legs around them.

--published in Great River Review

The Windfall Fruit

How frightened I was, she says, when my body

bloomed suddenly, this body I’d ignored

since I was a girl, when it swelled overnight

with fragrances and insects, pollen and black earth—

how strange it was to walk outside and feel

other animals were watching me, drawn to me, wanting

to touch me, to live near my spell,

which I hadn’t intended. Who was I then,

glowing and pregnant, though no one had loved me,

hungry to touch things, to fill myself with creatures

and feelings: songs and dances to live by?

I feared I’d lost myself, and then I was myself again.

This morning the wind shakes the tops of the fruit trees—

key lime, mango, carambola, avocado.

It blows down the fruit that was too high to reach:

Ripe fruit, bruised but tasty, lies scattered in the grass.

--published in Many Loves

Copyright © 2018 by Michael Hettich. All Rights Reserved